Royal duo’s shock split: What happened?

A royal bond that stole hearts came to an end after one surprising move.

A royal author shared his take on what went wrong between the two royal wives, who were once best friends.

Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson’s friendship ended after Andrew’s former wife published her autobiography, according to Andrew Lownie.

Diana, Prince William and Harry’s late mother, allegedly distanced herself over concerns Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie’s mom was undermining her reputation and selling stories.

In a new video released by the Daily Mail on May 28, the histrorian and author recapped the arc of the relationship between the two women.

Diana and Ferguson, 66, were fourth cousins and childhood friends who married into the royal family just a few years apart.

The late Princess reportedly was the one who introduced Ferguson to the former Prince Andrew.

Lownie claimed that the sisters-in-law fell out over Ferguson’s 1996 autobiography, My Story, “in which she referred to catching a verruca [wart] from borrowing some shoes from Lady Diana.”

“In fact, the reality was that Diana was very concerned that Sarah Ferguson might well be selling stories about her, and that relationship was never repaired, though Sarah Ferguson pretended it had,” he said.

Lownie, author of the bestselling 2025 investigative biography Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, alleged that Ferguson was someone Diana turned to voice her frustrations about life in the royal fold.

“There were some concerns Diana had that Fergie perhaps was too boisterous, and she was kind of undermining Diana’s own reputation, and she began to distance herself,” he said.

The author claimed that Diana also pulled a “tough trick” on Ferguson by saying that they would both divorce their husbands, the future King Charles and then-Prince Andrew, at the same time.

However, Diana “let Sarah Ferguson do it on her own and basically learned from how the royal family treated Sarah Ferguson about how she would handle the divorce herself.”

Ferguson and Andrew divorced in 1992 after a decade of marriage but remained close in the years that followed. However, they continued to live together at Royal Lodge, the home they were evicted from in October 2025, in light of renewed scrutiny around his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

Diana and Charles, meanwhile, married in the “wedding of the century” in 1981, separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996. William and Harry’s mother lost her life in a car accident in Paris the following year at age 36.

Ferguson, popularly know as Fergei, previously claimed that she and Diana uniquely supported another during the heyday that they dominated the front page as the “wives of Windsor.”